Last week I visited a friend’s family. Their 3-year-old grandson repeatedly fell apart while testing boundaries and losing. This is normal behavior for his age. Still, I was struck by the intensity of his grief. It was real and loud. I was also struck by the tender love of his parents. Each time, one of them took him to another room and quietly encouraged him to calm down and describe his feelings. They held him close, patiently listened to his sobbing words, and then lovingly explained what he had to do differently.
Though on a grander scale, I sense echoes of intense grief and tender love in the Gospel reading* this week. Jesus is looking out over Jerusalem, the home of the prophets, weeping. He laments, “How often I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
There is the crux. Willingness, or lack of willingness. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of my experience in the Church of the Saviour is the membership commitment that requires one hour of silent prayer each day. This practice means willingly stepping into that loving embrace every day. It means facing my willfulness and resistances. Love’s compass provides a daily orientation of my will, and often a reorientation of values and vision more aligned with God’s own.
I wish I could say my resistances vanish. They do not. There are ongoing temptations and struggles. Yet, I can say that my willingness to surrender in trust grows. That is a fruit of repeated practice. I am grateful to have seen it illustrated in my grandson’s eyes last week after he repeatedly abandoned himself to his parents’ loving embrace. Though very young, he is learning to trust his parents’ love, even when the new direction given is difficult.
For Jesus, the difficult direction was Calvary. And when Luke wrote this Gospel, Jerusalem lay in ruins. Yet resurrection was given. Resurrection happens, over and over, on every level. For that is the intrinsic promise of God’s ever-embracing, eternal Love.
-Ann Dean, Dayspring Retreat Mission Group
Reflection Questions
- What is your deepest lament?
- What practice opens you most fully to Gods’ Love?
- Who supports your willingness to trust a new direction?
